I'll Wait For Another Day

I was going to do a post today on filing. However, I think it's pretty well known that I'm in Connecticut. Our state is in shock. I'm nowhere near Newtown but have contacts in the Connecticut children's writing community who are. For today, I'm speechless.

A Very Skulduggery Christmas

My niece and I are fans of  Skulduggery Pleasant  by Derek Landy. I am, in fact, Rebecca's Skulduggery supplier. Seven Skulduggery Pleasant books were published in the United Kingdom. For some misguided and lame-brained reason, only three were published in the United States. I began feeling anxious for Pleasant back in 2009 when I read that Landy was making appearances in this country hoping to help the series catch on here. What was the problem? Were they too clever and witty? Did someone object because this fantasy wasn't all doom and gloom? Well, okay, it was pretty doom and gloom what with Skulduggery being dead and all and fighting some group that often seemed unbeatable. So if depressing tragedy is a requirement for fantasy on this side of the Atlantic, the books had it. They were just amusing about it. Is that a crime?

And at the end of the third book, our hero suffered a major setback. Rebecca and I have been left hanging for a year or two now.

Well, anyway, I ordered a copy of Volume Four from merry old England. The seller claimed to have a used copy that was like new and the fee for mailing it was incredibly reasonable. Unreasonably reasonable, I feared. The book wasn't going to arrive until after Christmas, but Rebecca is cool. She'd be happy to know it was coming.

Except it isn't coming! It's here! It arrived yesterday and the description "like new" was entirely accurate. The book looks fantastic. And it's English. I hope it's full of Englishisms like lorry for truck and lift for elevator.

Merry Christmas to me! I mean...to Rebecca.

I better go wrap it right away.

Time Management Tuesday: Who's Doing What? When? Where? And, Maybe, Why?

We lose a certain amount of time--and energy--here at Chez Gauthier because we have trouble making sure everyone in the clan who needs to know about certain activities actually does know about them. Sometimes a plan is of limited use, if not everyone knows about it. Or, even worse, if you're the only one who knows you've made one.

Communicating what's happening so it can happen can relate to managing personal time in order to make professional time. But it can also be specifically about professional time. Writers who make appearances and travel or work with partners or people who manage their graphic and technical needs risk spending extra time bringing others up to speed. It's far faster and more efficient to keep people in your loop in the first place.

A few weeks ago, while trying to research a connection between yoga and concentration, I stumbled upon Creativity and Time: An Interview with Jeffrey Davis at author Laraine Herring's blog. Davis is a writer and creativity consultant. In the interview with Herring, he talks about keeping track of schedules with his wife. He says they will regularly ask each other, "“What do you need today in terms of time?”

I thought of this practice of his this weekend after we experienced another family member slipping through the cracks relating to holiday planning. Now, I have to tell you, Gauthiers are not likely to ask, "What do you need in terms of time?" We're more "Here's what's happening. Now don't you dare tell me you didn't know about it" kinds of people. And touching in every day would really get on all our nerves. But making sure plans have been communicated, especially if they're my plans, seems as if it could save time that I'd rather use for work.

So, I've started a new Sunday planning practice with family members. (Which is not to be confused with my Monday morning planning practice, which I do by myself.) On weeks when the extended family is involved or might want to know what's happening, I'm including a group e-mail. The planning includes what's happening, who is involved, and where it's happening. Sometimes we will have to get into why. The planning could relate to weekdays, evenings, or weekends. It could relate to anything that deals with professional or personal responsibilities.

Knowledge is power, so they say. My theory is that it also saves time.

Blog Culture AndThe Next Big Thing Author Meme

I am taking part in The Next Big Thing Author Meme, thanks to Sarah Stevenson. Google "The Next Big Thing" and authors. It's all over the place.

This very professionally focused meme is an example of the collaborative nature of blog culture. I think a lot of authors don't understand the blogging world. They hook up with Blogger or Wordpress, post some stuff occasionally, and say they have a blog and, thus, a platform. But they don't really understand the networking aspect of blogging. Yeah, they hope for some kind of viral thing to happen to their book. Somehow. But blogging remains apart from them. It's something they do because the marketing books and many, many how-to articles say they should.

I haven't even done my Next Big Thing blog post yet. I've only been mentioned as doing one in the future. The stats for this blog have jumped these last two days. That, my lads and lasses, is blog culture at work.

You have to be part of the culture to have things like that happen. You have to be somebody who has connected with other somebodies in the blogosphere. You can't just treat blogging like ordering post cards and bookmarks, part of the marketing plan that you're forced to do.

Weekend Reading

I have just spent several hours with Christmas baking, some of which did not turn out very well. The word "nasty" may end up being applied to one concoction. I have been looking forward to sitting down with the Internet for nearly an hour.

Reviving Your Out-of-Print Novel as an E-book Part 2 at Tales from the Rushmore Kid. I actually saw this guest post on Friday. We did Item 1 differently than Tina's guest blogger did with her e-book. In order to make sure we had the book as it actually was printed, we sent a copy of the completed book to be scanned, which did, indeed, come back to us as a Word document. The scanning process changed the appearance of the text, in large part because there are a number of different fonts used in the book. All the different fonts had to be corrected by my computer guy. In addition, the scanning process caused all kinds of minor copy errors, such as dropping quotation marks. I've copy edited the book twice and plan to do a third run through before publication at the end of January. Between the two of us, we've probably put in a hundred hours, anyway. Was there an easier way to do this? I don't know.

What Creative Nonfiction Isn't at Celebrate Science. It's hard for me to resist a creative nonfiction post.

150 Ways to Give a Book at MotherReader. I think that when Pam started doing this a few years ago, the list was much shorter.

In Sendak "born to Holocaust survivors"? at Oz and Ends, J.L. Bell notes something I totally missed in The Believer Sendak Interview.

Ah, Days of Blood & Starlight, the follow up to Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor, was released last month. Ah, I was vaguely aware of that because Laini and I are Facebook friends. Which, in this case, means we don't actually know each other.

Well, this prowl around was nowhere near as relaxing as I'd hoped it would be, since I have probably a half hour of work to do on the so-called "good computer," if only someone else would give up whatever game he's playing on it. There are hours of other things to do here, too.

Back to the salt mine.

Joel Stein, Role Model

The most recent issue of Time has an essay by Joel Stein about the Common Core requirements regarding nonfiction in the schools. He says that he has "found out that there are English teachers who assign my column as reading material."

When my sons were in the upper grades of elementary school and in middle school in the 90s, writing essays was being pushed big time in their schools, primarily just before the state mandated tests, which tested essay writing. To my knowledge, they never read essays at school. I saw nothing to even suggest they saw anything that would show them what an essay should be or make them want to read or write one.

I did, indeed, slip my sons the occasional Joel Stein column in those days. He could use a thesis statement and then continue writing about what he had told readers he was going to write about. Sounds simple, doesn't it? Then why doesn't every essay writer do it? On top of that, Stein is self-deprecating and witty without being cruel.

I'm not saying he's the perfect writing role model. But, seriously, the Gauthier boys could have done a whole lot worse.

And, yes, they can write.

More From Ivy And Bean, Two Of My Favorite Girls

I have been a fan of the Ivy + Bean books by Annie Barrows for years. As I said back in 2007:

"Bean could be described as a Junie B. and Clementine type of child in that she tends to go her own way. Her creator describes her as "loud and wild." The difference between Bean and the other leads in the big, girl series is that Bean is comfortable with who she is. She isn't always anxiously interacting with adult characters who reassure her in some way or are involved in helping her learn a reassuring lesson. Most of Bean's interaction is with another child and not adults. She interacts with Ivy, her co-lead, who, superficially, is your stereotypical quiet little girl.

Yeah, your quiet little girl who is into magic and potions, and who is sharp as a tack. Talk about still waters running deep." 

Their eighth book, No News Is Good News, is more of the same, and the same is very good. Ivy and Bean want to take part in a school fad that requires money. Their first plan to make some involves selling potions that Ivy would make. Surprisingly, that doesn't work. So they fall back on creating a neighborhood newspaper, as Bean's father did when he was young. They grasp the concept of selling subscriptions right away. That they will have to provide something to the people who paid up comes as something of a surprise to them. They also struggle with the concept of "news."

Yes, stories about child-run newspapers have been done before. But not with Ivy and Bean.

Ivy + Bean No News Is Good News is a Cybils nominee in the Easy Readers/Short Chapter Books category.

 

Time Management Tuesday: Taking On Procrastination

Okay, my lads and lasses, today I am finally taking on the subject of procrastination. No, I have not been procrastinating about doing so. I have been studying the subject. Back in October, I began to wonder if what a lot of us call procrastination had become a catch-all term. According to Timothy Pychyl who maintains the blog Don't Delay at Psychology Today and is the author of the very fine book The Procrastinator's Digest A Concise Guide to Solving the Procrastination Puzzle, I was right. According to Pychyl, procrastination is not just "putting off work for whatever reason," as I stated here in October. It's not just waiting until the last minute and working madly to catch up. It is more than a habit.

Pychyl says that true procrastination "is the voluntary delay of an intended action despite the knowledge that this delay may harm the individual in terms of the task performance or even just how the individual feels about the task or him- or herself. Procrastination is a needless voluntary delay." It has a very specific definition within psychology.

True procrastination, Pychyl explains, is a self-regulation issue. Individuals are not regulating their behavior in order to achieve goals, meaning they are risking not achieving those goals. He doesn't describe procrastination as a time management problem. Instead, it's similar to gambling, drinking, overeating, and trouble managing money. Real procrastination, the hardcore stuff, involves individuals choosing to do something that will, essentially, harm them, meaning not doing the work toward a goal that would benefit them. You can procrastinate about going to the doctor, getting started on a diet, working on a book, submitting writing to an agent or publication.

All these things have value to the individual who wants to do them. Thus, choosing not to do these things is harmful.

A big part of the reason procrastinators procrastinate is that they're giving in to the need to feel good immediately. Yes, loosing forty pounds would make my health better six months from now, but if I eat three cookies now, I'll feel good immediately, so I'll put off starting the diet until tomorrow. Yes, finishing writing this book I've been working on would be a very positive thing because my editor has already voiced interest in it, but feeling good about finishing that won't happen for a couple of months and I can feel good about talking with some friends on Facebook right now.

Pychyl's book is extremely well organized and clearly written. He discusses various aspects of procrastination and strategies for change. Procrastination is much, much more than just a time management issue. However, I think there is one classic time management technique that writers could combine with one of Pychyl's strategies in a very helpful way.

Pychyl talks about implementation intentions. Essentially,  with implementation intentions you're planning ahead what you're going to do in specific situations. (And you know how I love the whole situational thing.) He suggests using an "if-then" format for phrasing the intention you plan to implement. You've heard these kinds of things before relating to other behaviors that require self-regulation. "If I'm going to a party, then I will eat something before I leave so I won't get there hungry and overeat." "If I'm meeting friends at the casino, then I'll only bring $30 of gambling money so I won't risk losing more than I can afford."

Writers concerned about procrastinating can try combining an implementation intention with the unit system. "If I want to stop working while the timer is on, then I'll wait until it goes off."  There are two helpful aspects to this scenario: 1. We've talked about relatively short units of time here, under an hour. So if  procrastinators have to rely on their intention to get them through the unit, they shouldn't have to work long to make it to the end. 2. The break between units can serve as a reward. Whatever they do in the break can make procrastinators feel good now, and they can also feel good because their intention worked for them.

This feeling good thing is important because Pychyl says procrastinators often suffer self-esteem issues over procrastinating. So another plus I see with using the unit system to help procrastination is that if people can't make it through the short unit, they've lost only a small amount of time, and they can start again the same day.  The unit system gives many opportunities over the course of a day to meet the implementation intention, feel good, and actually get some work done.

The Procrastinator's Digest is a marvelous book. If you have an e-reader, you can get it dirt cheap.

Yes, Ivan Is A One And Only

The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate is one of those books that is saved by a really great character. Ivan is a gorilla, and he tells his own story in short chapters laid out in short paragraphs. They aren't indented and are spaced in such a way that the material on the pages could pass for lists. This all seems to me to suggest the way a nonhuman would tell a story.

Ivan's is a hard core outsider story, because, though he describes himself as having had a life as a human at one point ("My life as a human was a glamorous one, although my parents, traditional sorts, would not have approved."), he clearly has not. He lived in a human family only as long as the human family could tolerate him. He observes humans from inside a cage.

He may not quite get that his understanding is often just a little bit off. So all his observations and philosophical sounding statements are from the point of view of someone who is watching humans but not always totally getting beyond the surface of what he observes. This is not to say that he's superficial. He does the best he can with what he's got to work with.

Applegate was inspired by a true story of a gorilla who lived much like Ivan did. Since this included spending decades in a cage, you might think this is one of those evil people doing animals bad stories. But the entire human race isn't written off here. Even Mack, who could be described as the heavy, is portrayed as more unenlightened and maybe confused than wicked.

The One and Only Ivan is a clever, often very readable story. But it also often doesn't have a lot of narrative drive. Which brings us to an opportunity to do a Plot Project piece.

Plot Project: You could describe The One and Only Ivan plot as being built around  a character wanting something and having to overcome obstacles to get it. Ivan wants to save a young elephant. But that young elephant doesn't enter the story until about a quarter of the way through the book, and Ivan's mission to save her doesn't become clear until close to the halfway point. You could also describe The One and Only Ivan plot as beginning with a disturbance to his world--the arrival of the young elephant. But, again, that doesn't come until a quarter of the way in. The real story here, the something that happens to somebody and so what, doesn't begin for quite a while. Until then, you're talking world building and characterization.

Ivan is a wonderful character, but it wasn't until the last third of the book that I became interested in what might happen next.

There's a discussion of The One and Only Ivan in the comments to this review at the Heavy Medal: A Mock Newbery Blog. The One and Only Ivan is also a Cybils nominee in the Fantasy/Science Fiction category. That seems an odd place for it, given what we think of as fantasy these days. But it is about a gorilla who can write a book, so...

Gail's Weekend Blog Finds

Alex at The Children's War reviews The Poppy Lady, a picture book about Barbara Elizabeth Walsh, who popularized poppies as a tribute to WWI veterans. Though I haven't read the book, myself, I like the idea behind it because many children see groups selling artificial poppies to support veterans groups. The Poppy Lady sounds as if it connects the past with the present.

I don't read a lot of blog book reviews prior to reading books because so many of them are favorable, sometimes over the top favorable. There's no need for me to read the reviews. The fact that a blogger is reviewing it means the review is going to be about how good the book is. I may try to skim the first para to see what the book is about, and if the book is reviewed at a lot of blogs, I'll probably recall the title and may pick it up and look at it if I stumble upon it somewhere. So blog reviews aren't wasted on me, I just don't use them the way most readers do. (Or maybe I do, I don't know how most readers use them.)

At any rate, I've been seeing the title Bomb, The Race to Build--And Steal--the World's Most Dangerous Weapon for a while now. But it was only a few minutes ago, when I saw Tea Cozy's review, that it really hit me what this book is about and why I might be interested. As a young man after WWII, my father-in-law was involved in a study to determine what structures would withstand an atomic bomb. If I recall correctly, the group's conclusion was that there were none. He once told me that the work had paid well and been fun.  So now I'll probably be picking up Bomb when I stumble upon it. I may take a look at it and see if it would be appropriate for a "family gift" to pass around to relatives interested in reading about something connected to their Papa's work as a young man.

I actually found Defining Contemporary, Realistic & Historical Fiction at Stacked earlier this week. I had some thoughts about this post but was unable to post them there. (I'm often unable to post comments. Do these people see me coming?) Now I can't remember them! Though I do think I was wondering if  when a contemporary novel becomes dated it can become historical fiction. I think not. It's just dated, which isn't considered a good thing.